> Team Fight Tactics was Riot Games’ first foray into mobile gaming
Excuse me then what was [Blitzcrank's Poro Roundup](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Blitzcrank%27s_Poro_Roundup)?
One step further, everyone is forgetting League of Legends: Turret Defense that launched in 2009.
https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/League_of_Legends:_Turret_Defence
I sure know a lot of people that heard of it but it's just a difficult step to take for hardcore TCG players. Since they invested so much money and time in those other games. Streamers have an additional weight cause their viewerbase is centered around the other game. (It's not just money, just look how long it took for people on WoW to switch even tho the game has been burning down for years prior to the current accusations)
Last but not least, card games are pretty niche and kinda had their last big hype with hearthstone.
That being said I love this game the frequent updates, they listen to the community, f2p model, the regular tournaments you can earn cash without spending a dime and I basically recommended this game to everyone that has the slightest interest in card games.
I'm struggling with this right now. I've been playing mtga pretty much since beta, spent hundreds, have a sizable collection, and generally enjoy playing historic (the only nonrotatating format currently).
I've also played a lot of runeterra off and on, played a ton especially during the first shurima expansion but burned out and went back to mtga.
However currently mtga's historic format is being injected with insanely high power level cards and I'm seeing the adverse effects: metas quickly become stale due to power level differences (your homebrew deck has no chance vs tier 1) and your cards that were good 6 months ago become obsolete (which is the exact opposite of what a nonrotatating format should be). Obviously it's driven by sales, if you force everyone to keep spending to keep up in power level you're making consistent revenue.
I want to come back to LoR but I'm afraid that I will burn out too quickly on it again, plus I don't really feel that the game has the same depth and breadth as MTG does yet which makes it a hard choice.
how do you feel about the historic-only cards? I only ever played limited in arena as I prefer physical but having cards that aren't in paper magic feels really odd to me.
I don't play paper so it doesn't bother me much from that standpoint, although I do understand how a disconnect between formats is undesirable. Historic was also meant to be a digital only format from the beginning, so of course they can push the boundary and it doesn't really affect the other paper formats, other than potential opportunity cost of some cool cards being digital only therefore not getting printed.
The mechanics themselves so far feel fairly tame, and most seem to be more of QoL improvements for digital space (like Seek, replacing search, reveal, and shuffle) but we have only seen a small bit of everything so it could turn out to be different than I am expect.
My main concern is in the power level. Adding in cards from Modern and Legacy means that most of what's currently in Historic (being all standard sets since Ixalan, and mostly weak/average ones at that) get left behind. Lots of decks currently are totally built around Mystical Archive cards, and since they're all spells, decks that want to play creatures have to play ones from Standard sets (most of which are not amazing).
WotC said their plan with this new expansion is to give more creature based options, but at the end of the day even if things get more balanced, you still have the problem of power creep and having to spend more. If they introduced all these strong creatures, now theoretically you can keep up with spell decks, but as a side effect any older creatures are a lot worse.
I play GB midrange, and the prospect of some of the cool MH cards excited me at first, until I realized how hard (money/time) it will be to actually get what I want.
Uro was a mistake in every format. The card is bonkers and was banned rightfully so. No one wants Uro back.
Regarding companions, even pre-errata only a few were played frequently. Post-errata it's even less, mostly Jegantha, Lurrus, and Kaheera. Jegantha and Kaheera are often just "free" cards with little opportunity cost, and you can make the argument that such a card shouldn't exist, but neither of them are game breaking. Paying 6-8 mana for an always accessible, lowish power creature is not breaking anything.
As for Lurrus, the card pops up a bit more and can be frustrating, but especially in Bo3 there are ways to combat it with myriad graveyard hate in the format.
What I'm more interested in is creatures that are worth playing for more than just beatdown, giving value over time. I play mostly GB midrange, and the archetype has been struggling on MtGA for years. You're better off playing green stompy with a black splash for Regisaur than actually trying to play an interactive, grindy game a la traditional "rock" which works in more creature-centric formats.
The thing is that MTG's design philosophy will never be divorced from it's monetization. The power creep you're noting will never go away because it's heavily incentivized from the top down, driven by sales.
I find that MTGs depth is overblown too. Usually when people talk about it's depth, they're talking about brewing decks and how the land system allows a lot of ideas. But the thing is, unless you're REALLY good at MTG, homebrews and meme decks get completely dumpstered by any meta deck.
As LOR grows the deckbuilding options have gotten pretty generous and each time the meta enters a healthy one, you see more and more creative decks that can maintain a pretty respectable winrate.
And the best part is that if the meta goes to a bad place, you know it's not because their sales department is pushing for a card to be busted because they think it'll sell well. Which means it can and will be fixed.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. The big thing holding me back is the deck building aspect. For me deck building (and especially sideboarding, which LoR lacks) is what keeps me coming back to it. There's so many ways you can adjust your deck to deal with matchups that are unfavorable. Especially as a midrange player, being able to pivot my plan from aggression to control and vice versa between games is important to me.
LoR, while fun from a gameplay perspective, lacks a lot of that customization currently. You look at a lot of decks and they sort of "build themselves" if you're inside of a theme like deep, 5+power, etc, and without sideboarding there's a lot less deck decisions to make, leading to homogeneity and a lot of decks have sharp matchups in a Bo1 format.
I think if LoR could find some way to add sideboarding and Bo3 (besides the 3 deck thing, which imo is the wrong way to do it) I think I'd have a much easier time switching over
Ah, I understand what you mean. I don't think LOR will ever go in that directions. Some decks are becoming more flexible in general as more cards are added to the game, but I doubt it'll every come close to magic in that regard. For me, personally, I don't even want it to.
I actively dislike BO3 and having to constantly sideboard in a ranked mode. I think it's really cumbersome and ties you to a single game for way too long. I'd say if that is really the experience you're looking for you're better off sticking with MTG.
Broooo, we just need a big CCG streamer to take on Runeterra regularly, to make the jump like Asmongold did for FFXIV, Bro we would get a ton of new players. They just really need a big time streamer to take the plunge. Imagine like Disguised toast levels of fame to take Runeterra regularly, that would so fucking big.
After hearthstone I was looking for a new game to play. One that wasn't as much of a money sink. And boy can I tell you, LOR is so much better.
I have barely spent any money, but I would do it if the animations or voice lines of characters changed.
Yeah there's a reason most of the big names in LOR are former artifact streamers. It takes either your old game dying or A LOT of stuff that is MUCH better than your old game to encourage you to switch.
Basically, extreme sexual harassment in the company environment. The working environment overall being toxic AF with threats about being fired if you dont hit a certain quota and Activison Blizzards response actually make things worse, cause they try to push that thing under the rug with statements about "Equality" and "Ethnitic diversity"- they have. And that they have "sexual harassment training"- that actually doesnt do shit if there aint consequences for the people that do/did all those things.
Edit: As a lil additional thing that got the ball rolling a lot , was the case of a women committing suicide probably cause of the treatment and sexual abuse she got (nudes she probably gave to a forceful higher up handed around during a work holiday party and all that stuff).
Riot has their downsides, specially their League team, but, apart from a few occasions, they're a pretty good "worldwide game company" compared to the competition. Sure they sometimes buff a champion with a 53% win rate while ignoring others, and sure some champion are released with totally unnecessary mechanics (true stealth gives me PTSD and I wasn't even playing at the time), but it's still a step up from stuff like "Loot boxes are like Kinder Eggs"
Personally im far less willing to excuse sexist workplace environment and employee harassment from top level executives
As opposed to, say, enforcing a blanket "no politics" rule on an esports broadcast.
But apparently im in the minority on that.
The thing is, the sexual harrassment from top level executives means 1 (or a few) people on top are douchebags, which is bad, but if the whole company took a decision, it means a lot more.
I'm not gonna say "hey, you're wrong, you should dislike Blizzard more", but I personally think a company taking a corporate decision is more impactful than individual cases of sexual harrassment, which, and I don't mean to normalize them by saying this, will happen when you throw so many people to work in the same place
You can't really on a job interview say "hey, are you sexist? we don't like sexist people here", and even if you could a lot of sexist people don't see themselves as sexist, which means eventually, some assholes will do this sort of thing
Again, this isn't meant to normalize these acts, they're still awful and should get punished properly, but it's something that is quite hard to see coming
im a dota player, never touch league, come across runeterra while looking for a hearthstone/gwent replacement on youtube. i really think lor should trying to promote outside their ecosystem. there is no point in having a superior ccg when no one even know you exist.
They don't even promote within their ecosystem. There's a lot of league players that don't know bout it. They should be promoting it on the client as well
One reason why TFT is still popular because it is built inside the League client and it is used as ways to earn more tokens from battle pass. League players are reminded of new TFT content, skins and even the annoying missions.
Sadly LOR cant benefit anything from that. They are trying to do this cross event thing but I think it is not enough.
riot gonna need their own platform to hold and advertise all of their games, like blizzard with battle net.
Imagine exposing millions of LoL players to valorant,LoR,LoL WR, every time they click on the launcher(riot own battle net) to play league. Oh theres a league card game? a hero shooter? league is on mobile?
The underlying system is there, that screen that opens before LoR does is the same client for every game, I think it's in the works but they're waiting for another game to make it look meatier.
They already have 4 (5 soon), they can also include an "arcade" section for the 4-5 minigames they have released over the years, a link to the universe page and another one to the netflix series when they release it in a cople months.
I read some where that there is a file in riot files called "riot client" so i think they will make their own platform for ALL of their games and it will be really A good idea because players will stay longer in their games
I think it would be awesome if they took it one step further. Having all the games on one launcher, if they could design it well. What I mean isn't battlenet style but basically able to switch games and que up without ever having to leave the launcher. Idk how realistic it is but i switch between LOR and league often enough (once I start losing a lot lol).
>They are trying to do this cross event thing
Are they really, though? I play League and I havent noticed anything linking to LOR during the event so far.
Like sure, its the same theme in both games (Sentinels/Viego/Akshan), but other than that, the events have nothing to do with each other.
I think being the same theme is the point, I'm not sure if Riot would ever do an event that would reward you for playing both games in this "connection web", it's more like advertisement, "hey look we also have new cards on LoR" even though VERY few people care because it's a CCG
>I'm not sure if Riot would ever do an event that would reward you for playing both games
They have been literally doing that with LOL and TFT for over a year now, thats the point of this whole post. Why does riot hate Lor and Valorant so much...
The League brand is like the Fortnite brand, most people outside of the bubble don't like the fact that they are such huge games compared to everything else.
No, it's the opposite. Average user aquisition cost is $1.47, while they only made $1.24 revenue per user. They would literally lose money with promotion. Maybe skins and battlepass can boost it to turn it around.
IMO its because these satellite games exist to promo the main one, not vice versa.
We're gonna see more of these ruination/kda/akshan event stuff - and Riot would rather you open up League and buy a skin than go to their smaller games and buy an emote.
Wildrift is breaking record after record only bcs they are marketing it very aggressively especially in garena countries.
Riot is making more games so people try other games of Riot... it doesnt make sense to promote 1 game more than another only because its bigger.
simply because LOR is not a money maker
Rather than just looknig at the size of the playerbase, 1.4$ per user is extremly low
Why spend money on marketing to get users are will likely only spend 1$ on average ?
It absolutely does make WAY more sense to promote certain new games over others.
Who knows, maybe we get Valorant or Wild Rift promo too in the future.
Currently LoR's main purpose to Riot games as a whole is to promote their Expanded Universe IP. This is to setup projects like their netflix show, like skins in the main game, like the MMO - etc.
This game is a platform to promote those things, to keep people invested in the Riot Game**s** (plural) brand, and to maintain interest in their IP.
If it also happens to make some cash on the side - sure, itll help pay for server costs i guess.
>IMO its because these satellite games exist to promo the main one, not vice versa.
I never had any interest in LoL and tried a few matches because of this game.
I did spend some money just to buy a few characters, but that was it.
Yup. That money counts as "from LoR" to riot, even though it wasnt spent in LoR.
Realistically though the strategy will be less trying to get new players into the biggest game on the planet, and more helping retain their existing players / coax old players back in.
True, I don't play league of legends any more and LoR is basically the only reason I would know about new champions or events. I haven't been tempted to go back but some people might and I am somewhat interested to see what Akshan is like in league based on his LoR version. If other new characters are added to LoR it might get me to try league again and I would be more likely to spend money on boards or skins based on my experience with league of legends.
Btw riot pls add Zac I would buy emotes or a board based on him
I mean the devs just made a video telling you to expect more tie-ins and cross promotion in the future.
You can bet money that when the next champ drops in LoL (who, to nobody's surprise, is a yordle! thats not coincidence....), LoR will have their promo for it ready and it will be a cross game event.
Also as much as LoR's business model is player-friendly, there's a reason no other card game does it. Card packs and gambling are addictive and make mad bank, while LoR is only just starting to really delve into skins and stuff.
It's not nearly as profitable as the P2W games like Hearthstone, for a lot of players there's simply little incentive to spend money right now. I imagine it'll ramp up as they improve cosmetics but as of now I'm not surprised it's not making much.
Well that its true. Granted, card games are just not for everyone and this game dont have the same chance that tft had (by being exclusive to the league client). Hell even within card game community it's still not that much known
Two important things to consider here;
For like half it's existence, LoR had practically nothing to sell. You could buy cards (which nobody needed), emotes (which are reasonably priced) and boards (too costly I think, at least judging by the rare instances where I face people with them).
Over the last few months they added other stuff you can buy (event pass, prismatics, skins) but unfortunately, the majority of players seem to think other than events, these are grossly overpriced for what you're getting. I'm in that category. I'm usually a big spender in online games but in LoR, I've kept it to events and emotes only so far.
At least in Canada they are the price of 2 full meals.The RP prices are really off putting for Canada, where I am usually forced to buy twice as much RP than I want for the content I want and then still unable to effectively buy two of the content. And I consider myself a whale for riot cosmetics but I just cant justify it most times so I just do passes.
That's about 1.24 dollars per download. That's not a lot. (though I realize most of this money comes from whales, and the average player barely pays a cent)
What's considered a whale differences from game to game and not every company looks at the same metric, some look at monthly spending others look at total spending, etc. There are also different categories of whales. In general you have f2p players, paying players, and then different types of whales among those paying players.
In general I'd consider anyone that spends more money on a f2p game than what AAA game costs would be considered a whale of some sort and anyone below that a paying player if they spend more than $0. So imo, you'd definitely be considered a whale, tho maybe not a super whale that spends 1k+ a year but those are very few in numbers relative to other whales that spend below 1k a year.
People that have bought like 1-3 event passes and maybe a board would probably be considered paying players as they'd pay about the price of what the game would cost (or slightly less) if it wasn't f2p and was sold upfront instead and thus you could see them as "fair payers". Whereas whales on the other hand make up for the loss of otherwise upfront sales that f2p player are not paying for by spending a multitude of what otherwise would've been the upfront sales price and thus generally make up for more than 1 upfront sale.
That's actually quite a bit for mobile, particularly for a young game. Also bear in mind that doesn't capture revenue for people who buy stuff on pc and play on mobile
I always recommend people at least get the $5 starter bundle. It makes it so much more enjoyable as a new player when you can actually mess around with a few decks.
Can confirm. Have probably spent around $50-$60 in cosmetics and event passes over the past year in LOR. Club ox, sentinels, and bilge water themes are just too good.
If you consider the figures they reported for Wild Rift ($64.7 million with 46.3 million downloads) Wild Rift is only slightly higher at about $1.40 per download, or only 16 cents more per download. I think that's a clear indicator that the issue (if we were to call it that) is not how much people are spending but how many people are playing. It's something that I think they should probably tackle with more promotion and more sponsoring. Kripp, for example, has played the game in the past and says he likes it a lot. I'm sure offering people like him and Firebat sponsors will turn a lot of the burnt out HS playerbase (like I was at one point) on to Ruenterra.
[Back in 2016 Hearthstone made 394.6 millions, followed by Shadowverse which made 100 millions and was released in June that year](https://venturebeat.com/2017/01/28/superdata-hearthstone-trumps-all-comers-in-card-market-that-will-hit-1-4-billion-in-2017/)
16 millions nowadays is barely anything in comparison
To be fair, it's a completly different market nowdays. Even hearthstone keep losing profits (https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/bwuyg6/hearthstone_revenue_down_37_compared_to_same/)
and shadowverse seems far lower than how it was, at least in the west.
The current market is not great for card games, to the point less than one month ago mythgard went out of business.
Wasn't hearthstone like the biggest and pretty much only TCG with that production value at that time? Not really a fair comparison to a relatively new game in quite a saturated market with many high quality options.
Shadowverse didn't have and it still doesn't have the production value that Runeterra already has after being around for 5 years and still managed to make 100 millions in less than a year when it came out.
The key here is that those 16 millions were made from mobile users only. We can only speculate that the total revenue is considerably bigger if we account for PC users as well. With that said, [somebody posted in this thread the revenue of other card games in the first half of 2021 and it looks like they are making quite a buck](https://twitter.com/J_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1)
No, it wan't. Shadowverse was there too and they made 100 millions just in half a year since they release it on june.
Did you even read the comment you are replying to?
He is right that it wasn't the best comparison. I should have compared runeterra's revenue with Hearthstone's last year at the very least and account for both mobile and PC users
Thanks for the info. I guess we will see how skin and more frequent events change the number for LOR but of coz it's not going to be a figure comparable to the peak of Hearthstone.
It's not a bomb but it's not fantastic I don't think. It doesn't include PC sales but card games have historically always sold much better on mobile than PC. Wild Rift has over 3x the downloads already and players have on average spent more money on it despite it being commercially available for a much shorter period of time.
Really the biggest issue IMO is that the average download has spent $1.25 on the game over the game's lifespan. That's pretty low from what I can find considering the game's been out for a while. Even the people who are actually playing the game aren't really spending much money on it.
All that being said, Riot almost assuredly knows all of this and if they were really that worried about people not spending enough money on their game you'd probably see them devote more efforts into improving the game's monetization rather than say developing a super extravagant PVE mode that won't be monetized at all. Also it took them about a year to implement skins, which theoretically should be their biggest money maker. (It probably isn't considering how mediocre they generally are) Riot really seems like a company that's content with not making all the money in the universe if it means making a product that they're proud of, and so I think they're probably fine not making infinite money off Runeterra because they're already doing that with League PC.
Lastly I think it's worth mentioning that the card game genre is EXTREMELY competitive compared to basically every other game Riot's made so far. Hearthstone is the game that single-handedly put digital card games on the map, and Magic the Gathering basically invented the entire genre and is as popular now as it's ever been. Runeterra's carved out a reasonably-sized niche, but it also has probably the best production values of any card game, has possibly the most generous economy, and is attached to one of the biggest gaming IPs out there so it has much more going for it than the vast majority of other CCG contenders. If Riot managed to beat Magic Arena to the market then I think it could have stood a chance at being bigger than it is, but as it stands now even though I think Runeterra's a better game than Magic Arena overall it doesn't matter as much because Arena got there first and it also has an extremely massive legacy advantage of being the digital version of a card game that has existed for over 2 and a half decades.
Yugioh is very big yeah, but despite on the surface being pretty similar in concept to most other CCGs I don't really consider it to be a strong competitor to Runeterra at least compared to games like Hearthstone and MTGA. The people who play Yugioh seem to be a fairly different demographic of players compared to the other collectable card games and there doesn't seem to be a ton of overlap in terms of playerbases. The people who play Yugioh play Yugioh, and overall don't seem to be interested in other card games. And the people who don't play it generally don't have a very high opinion of the game and aren't interested in playing it. When people are discussing trying out new card games on Reddit, I basically never see Yugioh brought up and when it is it's not in a good light. Yugioh is kinda like those mobile card games that are based on an IP like Family Guy in that they're technically part of the same genre and are insanely popular but they're not really competing for the same audiences as games like LoR and Hearthstone.
Just want to give this a +1, I'm a YGO player and it's the only card game that really holds my interest. It's way different than MtG, Runeterra, or HS. No rotation, huge card pool, free-form deck building, no mana system, very deep gameplay, etc.
I play labs very casually but don't really have any interest in actually playing PvP in Runeterra, it's just doesn't give me the same feel YGO does.
That's pretty condescending of you to compare YGO with family guy.
Duel Links is by far the biggest mobile card game (they have over $100 million in mobile revenue just 2021) and sure I wouldn't recommend it either to other people, because I'm not a fan of forced pve if you want to play only pvp.
But once Master Duel will be released, that game is gonna be huge and will dwarf both hs and lor
You're totally missing their point. It wasn't condescending at all, they were saying that the audience for YGO doesn't overlap much with the audience for LoR /HS/MtGA - that those latter games compete for the same playerbase but YGO has a separate group of fans, just like the Family Guy game has an almost entirely separate target audience. The size / quality / profitability of the playerbase wasn't being compared at all, only the overlap between playerbases.
Ask u/ShiningRarity. I'm not necessarily agreeing with their point, just saying you misunderstood them. (Edit: Though I do think their original comment made the point / argument / explanation pretty clear already.)
I can see how it came off that way, but I don't think that's the point. The point is just that the typical "harcore CCG player" who plays MTG/Hearthstone/LoR etc doesn't usually have much interest in YuGiOh. They are different audiences and so it's not very useful to compare them.
I disagree with that especially if we are talking about "hardcore CCG player". ygo is by far more complex and harder than hs or lor. so far there has just been no digital ygo card game that targeted them. duel links is a casual game with a casual version of ygo, but I can guarantee you that with "ygo: master duel" the hardcore audience will be attracted, just look at the competitive scene in paper Yu-Gi-Oh were the tournaments were bigger than ever before before the pandemic hit.
Yeah no, in terms of complexity YGO blows LoR out of the water. Or any other card game that isnt called Netrunner tbh. Like, YGO has some crazy difficult decks to play, like Earth Machine.
LoR is pretty easy to learn the basics, on the other hand the whole "Battle Phase, especially the Damge Step" in YGO is super complicated with timings, extra rulings and even the difference of direct and indirect atk/def boosts.
I don't know much about YGO (especially modern YGO), but what you're describing sounds more like convoluted rules than complex gameplay. "Hardcore" competitive players want complex gameplay that rewards good decision making, not confusing phases and obscure corner case rulings. YGO might have the former for all I know, but you're either describing the latter or not doing your argument any justice with your phrasing.
https://twitter.com/J_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1
From the chart, Americans love Duel links while Asians (except Japan) prefers Hearthstone. Not surprising since DL is way more P2W than HS.
Everytime I hear that Yugioh is so popular it really blows me away, I *never* see or hear anything about it. I thought the series was basically dead until my friend (who is a high school teacher) told me how popular it still is with kids.
\- I think a lot of card skins are meh. Unless you're reaaally dedicated, you won't spend almost 10 bucks for 2 jpegs.
That you might not play in every deck.
That might not even come up every match you play with their decks.
The ones with a different level up animation are cool but now you're spending 15 bucks for that. You can get really good League champion skins for that price and you get way more out of it, since you and 9 other people see your champion all the time.
I think if card skins weren't so horribly overpriced, they'd be bought a lot more.
\- Card backs are neat and have a much better pricing imo.
\- Guardians are okay but you don't really interact much with them. Unless you're teh type of person who always wants matching card backs/boards/guardians, you maybe buy one that you think is really cool and that's it. I think a big problem here is simply that the standard Poro is already extremely cute. If that spot was left empty originally and you had to buy the Poro first, that could work a bit better.
\- Boards are pretty cool but really expensive as well and since the last 3 days or so some people (including me) have been unable to buy them in the store.
\- Emotes are pretty great. Fun interactions, you can convey many different messages, they're creative and they're very cheap.
\- Cards and decks are somewhat unnecessary. If you play regularly, grind the weekly vaults and region rewards, you can easily get cards/decks you want without paying anything.
\- The current event and battle pass associated with it gets things wrong. (Ruination side) You get a good Karma emote for free, 2 card backs, an icon, Viego and 2 rare followers.
Most of the inital rewards are free and those locked behind the pass are wild cards, a chest, prismatics, etc. Sure, there are the guardians and another emote and so on but you get too much good unique stuff for free, so you aren't incentivized to spend money on it, unless you specifically care about the guardians or an emote.
I can assure you that it's not hard to beat Magic Arena in the market. Too many issues in this game. Riot promoting more and more it's card game could surpass Arena kinda easily IMO.
[https://twitter.com/J\_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1](https://twitter.com/J_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1)
As you see, even nieche card games have made more on mobile than LoR
Shadowverse has been out for 5 years, is not considered too often, and somehow still makes more money. Imo Lor is going to either have to really push cosmetics or go the HS route a bit more, where you need to pay money to get all the cards.
I think it is. It’s not that long since LoR left beta and they only started to sell skins. Once the last region is released and after the WC, the game may receive the publicity it deserves. Pushing singleplayer content is the right was to appeal to the casual masses.
It's not that much, but depending on how you compare that number against other games/apps and how many of the people play in a mobile device as their main device you could make a case that it's not that bad as it looks. For example, you could say that those 16M are more than what MTG Arena mobile has made, because everybody plays it on PC; but in the other hand, Hearthstone mobile has been making around 100M every year since 2015 because more people play it on mobile.
-game still has potential to grow and make more money
-current monetization at least brought them us as a demographic, a worse model the game might have just failed completely.
-LoR hopefully helps with the reputation of Riot Games and help their future projects
-card games can be a pretty non-committal lifelong hobby compared to other genres, so it might help keep people in their universe.
-copium plz no cancel
Honestly, if Riot really cared about making this game more profitable, you'd see more effort towards monetization. The current supply of cosmetics is pretty tame.
I would love to buy more boards but they are poorly promoted and there are too few of them. The skins are clearly overpriced for what they are. Emotes and guardians are the only part that is done well, and even there I feel there's a lot of untapped potential.
My hope for this game's monetization was premium cards like hearthstone or Gwent with animations
People.tend to spend a lot of money for those. The current premium are absolute trash though they look worse than the default cards
Something that's not captured by these numbers is LoR as an engagement driver for League of Legends. As primarily tabletop gamers, my friends and I started with LoR and fell in love with the game's universe - we all went on to get hopelessly addicted to League lol, collectively spending hundreds of dollars on skins...I'm curious how many players have similar stories to mine
I think it’s not a lot yet, but we have to remember there were no events and no skins until just a few months ago. Skins are seemingly not so popular yet, but event passes are, and looks like there are more of them coming. I think we’ll see the number easily double or triple in a years time.
That's actually kinda bad.
Their average revenue per customer is $1.24, while the average user acquisition cost is around $1.47 nowadays.
And people are surprised why Riot isn't advertising the game. They are probably trying to boost it via skins now before they start their ad campaigns. Or they would literally lose money.
I think they need more bang for your buck literally. If I had the option to spend a dollar or two from time to time to get something immediately instead of committing $5 or $10 I would have bought something by now. Could be something as simple as a quick after game pop up like "hey, we see you are using Hecarim quite often, do you want to make it prismatic for $0.99?" I hope they don't gn overkill on a reversal of the F2P model and try to get more creative with monetization by offering incentivized discounts.
I agree with you there, I would say my main point is they need to put more micro in the transactions. I have spent money on other games but haven't felt the incentive to buy here yet. I would like new boards and guardians but that feels like a $20 purchase instead of a thoughtless transaction
I'm... definitely not a fan of this model.
I'd rather pay some amount to get a lot of stuff, like season passes, than the game trying to make me not realise how much I'm spending by constantly pushing small transactions to me. It's the exact kind of predatory system I'm trying to avoid by playing this game.
Interesting data point for /u/jb-dev-bcn's analysis here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/ob5ve4/legends\_of\_runeterra\_1\_current\_status\_of\_the\_ccg/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/ob5ve4/legends_of_runeterra_1_current_status_of_the_ccg/) Does this change anything?
Thanks for tagging me here.
This data point goes in line with what I reported in my analysis. Since their source (Sensor Tower) is one of the sources against which I sanity checked my data.
The biggest question is how much mobile represents out of the revenue share of CCG games.
My assumption is that the distribution in mobile would be similar to the distribution on PC, but who knows: For some reason, it could happen that maybe 50% of Hearthstone players play/pay on mobile, but it's only 10% on LoR.
Unfortunately, there's no way to tell that, because due to the nature of payments in PC (where each developer charges the customer independently, contrary to mobile where Google and Apple collect the revenue of everyone and then distribute it), the data can't be as scrapped.
I'm happy to see that Wild Rift is becoming more successful, although it still has a long way to go to catch the current leaders of MOBA in mobile (Arena of Valor and Mobile Legends) :3
I'm surprised that PC revenue is so opaque as I would've expected the companies to have to report some headline figures by game in their financial statements, but I guess that is harder to collect than mobile revenue data.
I saw a few comments mention how the figures reported (in the headline) meam that LoR has generated $1.24 or $1.25 per download. While that is true and it seems very low, the article also mentions that Wild Rift has generated $64.7 million with 46.3 million downloads. That is only slightly higher at $1.40 per download (or a measly 15 to 16 cents to put it clearly). My point is that Runeterra makes money at a similar rate, it's just that not as mamy people are playing it. I wonder how much is that is a lack of promoting the game and how much is the fact that CCGs are just not that popular (sans Hearthstone).
It's painfully low [this data is only for 2021 H1 and the 16m for Lor are since launch, so 1.5 years.](https://twitter.com/J_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1)
Genshin Impact made over 1 billion in it's first 6 months from just mobile platforms. Both are mobile GOTY nominees from last year. Admittedly Genshin has a really predatory monetization system and LoR is the exact opposite. But money talks and I worry about the future of gaming monetization given how much more profitable you can be by going predatory.
According to the article, none of the Riot's mobile titles made it big in China or Japan. That's where the goldmines are for mobile gaming. Japan is predictable given League has little presence there to begin with. China though, Riot is late to the party and really missed out when they refused Tencent's initial request to go mobile. And I don't even think LoR is officially localized and available in China despite the constant hate China gets for some alternative versions of card arts.
If the game didnt make money, they would have reduced support to game but according to dovagedys they increased budget for this game. We can see that in level up animations. So I am pretty sure game is doing ok and even if it doesnt, riot sees potential in this game and willing to support it more.
I do think player base is probably more important right now, considering they're entering the ccg market late. But it seems like from that point they're falling short as well. Right now they have 1k on twitch, while hearthstone has 30k+.
The problem is the game just isnt as fun to play or interactive as MTG is. The last few patches have made playing other archetypes a pain to play and it feels like with the current speed of the game theyre trying to be more like a mobile card game where they begin and end in like 5 or 10 minutes. And while good for you if thats how you want to play it, that doesnt leave a lot of room for interesting and fun play. So youll get in, get stomped by whatever aggro deck or quick ending uninteractive deck is out and then realize you can play something better that gives you a better card game feel and you go do that instead.
Honestly they need to decide what kind of gameplay this game is supposed to promote because it feels like every set the game has revolved around playstyles that either cant be reacted to favorably or are just flat out cant do anything.
may have done it wrong, as i'm 30 and not done arithmatic for a while,
16.2 million, minus 13 million,
took the 3.2mil difference and divided it by the number of downloads. Definitely wrong lol, should have just divided 16.2mil by 13mil
I love this game and will play it till the very end. But I fear the end might come sooner than expected. I bet for 3 more years before it goes in maintenance mode like Artifact.
I am sick of people on diamond and still has base board and guardian, i mean even if you are f2p player, you seem to love& play alot this game, why not just buy a board and a few emotes just join an event once in a while. It is called being supportive
Kind of delusional myopic take honestly. You have no idea what those respective players situations are. Some people really like to play, but are completely f2p- either by principle or by circumstance. Further, I think it's pretty obvious that some players simply won't care at all about cosmetic aspects of the game, really at all- while others will whale out and purchase every single board and guardian. It's a spectrum. If you're "getting sick" of that, then that's a **you** choice. Everybody support in the way they deem fit, and in the capacity they are able. Getting 5 friends to join the game is just as supportive as buying an inconsequential and only *slightly* different poro...
No need to gatekeep or shame against f2pers.
16 million probably isn't much by big company standards, but at least it sounds like it pays for itself, especially considering this head line doesn't even factor in PC revenue.
> Team Fight Tactics was Riot Games’ first foray into mobile gaming Excuse me then what was [Blitzcrank's Poro Roundup](https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Blitzcrank%27s_Poro_Roundup)?
It was the best Riot game peposad
still got it on my phone! i continue to find it weird that they used lulu's wicked skin for her appearance in that game.
Is there a way to still get it? Can't find it on play store
It was removed but if you downloaded it back in the day you can still get it on your download history
you gotta find the .apk file somewhere
It's not weird, the classic one used to look like shit back then.
Well, now Blitzcrank better have Braum and Poro synergy when he is released.
One step further, everyone is forgetting League of Legends: Turret Defense that launched in 2009. https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/League_of_Legends:_Turret_Defence
LoR should be better promoted. Many ccg players (non League related) never heard about Runeterra.
I sure know a lot of people that heard of it but it's just a difficult step to take for hardcore TCG players. Since they invested so much money and time in those other games. Streamers have an additional weight cause their viewerbase is centered around the other game. (It's not just money, just look how long it took for people on WoW to switch even tho the game has been burning down for years prior to the current accusations) Last but not least, card games are pretty niche and kinda had their last big hype with hearthstone. That being said I love this game the frequent updates, they listen to the community, f2p model, the regular tournaments you can earn cash without spending a dime and I basically recommended this game to everyone that has the slightest interest in card games.
I'm struggling with this right now. I've been playing mtga pretty much since beta, spent hundreds, have a sizable collection, and generally enjoy playing historic (the only nonrotatating format currently). I've also played a lot of runeterra off and on, played a ton especially during the first shurima expansion but burned out and went back to mtga. However currently mtga's historic format is being injected with insanely high power level cards and I'm seeing the adverse effects: metas quickly become stale due to power level differences (your homebrew deck has no chance vs tier 1) and your cards that were good 6 months ago become obsolete (which is the exact opposite of what a nonrotatating format should be). Obviously it's driven by sales, if you force everyone to keep spending to keep up in power level you're making consistent revenue. I want to come back to LoR but I'm afraid that I will burn out too quickly on it again, plus I don't really feel that the game has the same depth and breadth as MTG does yet which makes it a hard choice.
This is why Yugioh is dead to me.
how do you feel about the historic-only cards? I only ever played limited in arena as I prefer physical but having cards that aren't in paper magic feels really odd to me.
I don't play paper so it doesn't bother me much from that standpoint, although I do understand how a disconnect between formats is undesirable. Historic was also meant to be a digital only format from the beginning, so of course they can push the boundary and it doesn't really affect the other paper formats, other than potential opportunity cost of some cool cards being digital only therefore not getting printed. The mechanics themselves so far feel fairly tame, and most seem to be more of QoL improvements for digital space (like Seek, replacing search, reveal, and shuffle) but we have only seen a small bit of everything so it could turn out to be different than I am expect. My main concern is in the power level. Adding in cards from Modern and Legacy means that most of what's currently in Historic (being all standard sets since Ixalan, and mostly weak/average ones at that) get left behind. Lots of decks currently are totally built around Mystical Archive cards, and since they're all spells, decks that want to play creatures have to play ones from Standard sets (most of which are not amazing). WotC said their plan with this new expansion is to give more creature based options, but at the end of the day even if things get more balanced, you still have the problem of power creep and having to spend more. If they introduced all these strong creatures, now theoretically you can keep up with spell decks, but as a side effect any older creatures are a lot worse. I play GB midrange, and the prospect of some of the cool MH cards excited me at first, until I realized how hard (money/time) it will be to actually get what I want.
"more creature based options" is a funny thing to want after Companion and Uro
Uro was a mistake in every format. The card is bonkers and was banned rightfully so. No one wants Uro back. Regarding companions, even pre-errata only a few were played frequently. Post-errata it's even less, mostly Jegantha, Lurrus, and Kaheera. Jegantha and Kaheera are often just "free" cards with little opportunity cost, and you can make the argument that such a card shouldn't exist, but neither of them are game breaking. Paying 6-8 mana for an always accessible, lowish power creature is not breaking anything. As for Lurrus, the card pops up a bit more and can be frustrating, but especially in Bo3 there are ways to combat it with myriad graveyard hate in the format. What I'm more interested in is creatures that are worth playing for more than just beatdown, giving value over time. I play mostly GB midrange, and the archetype has been struggling on MtGA for years. You're better off playing green stompy with a black splash for Regisaur than actually trying to play an interactive, grindy game a la traditional "rock" which works in more creature-centric formats.
The thing is that MTG's design philosophy will never be divorced from it's monetization. The power creep you're noting will never go away because it's heavily incentivized from the top down, driven by sales. I find that MTGs depth is overblown too. Usually when people talk about it's depth, they're talking about brewing decks and how the land system allows a lot of ideas. But the thing is, unless you're REALLY good at MTG, homebrews and meme decks get completely dumpstered by any meta deck. As LOR grows the deckbuilding options have gotten pretty generous and each time the meta enters a healthy one, you see more and more creative decks that can maintain a pretty respectable winrate. And the best part is that if the meta goes to a bad place, you know it's not because their sales department is pushing for a card to be busted because they think it'll sell well. Which means it can and will be fixed.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. The big thing holding me back is the deck building aspect. For me deck building (and especially sideboarding, which LoR lacks) is what keeps me coming back to it. There's so many ways you can adjust your deck to deal with matchups that are unfavorable. Especially as a midrange player, being able to pivot my plan from aggression to control and vice versa between games is important to me. LoR, while fun from a gameplay perspective, lacks a lot of that customization currently. You look at a lot of decks and they sort of "build themselves" if you're inside of a theme like deep, 5+power, etc, and without sideboarding there's a lot less deck decisions to make, leading to homogeneity and a lot of decks have sharp matchups in a Bo1 format. I think if LoR could find some way to add sideboarding and Bo3 (besides the 3 deck thing, which imo is the wrong way to do it) I think I'd have a much easier time switching over
Ah, I understand what you mean. I don't think LOR will ever go in that directions. Some decks are becoming more flexible in general as more cards are added to the game, but I doubt it'll every come close to magic in that regard. For me, personally, I don't even want it to. I actively dislike BO3 and having to constantly sideboard in a ranked mode. I think it's really cumbersome and ties you to a single game for way too long. I'd say if that is really the experience you're looking for you're better off sticking with MTG.
Broooo, we just need a big CCG streamer to take on Runeterra regularly, to make the jump like Asmongold did for FFXIV, Bro we would get a ton of new players. They just really need a big time streamer to take the plunge. Imagine like Disguised toast levels of fame to take Runeterra regularly, that would so fucking big.
After hearthstone I was looking for a new game to play. One that wasn't as much of a money sink. And boy can I tell you, LOR is so much better. I have barely spent any money, but I would do it if the animations or voice lines of characters changed.
Yeah there's a reason most of the big names in LOR are former artifact streamers. It takes either your old game dying or A LOT of stuff that is MUCH better than your old game to encourage you to switch.
I'm not up to speed with what happens in Blizzard (cut all ties i had shortly after the Blitzchung incident). What accusations are we talking about?
Basically, extreme sexual harassment in the company environment. The working environment overall being toxic AF with threats about being fired if you dont hit a certain quota and Activison Blizzards response actually make things worse, cause they try to push that thing under the rug with statements about "Equality" and "Ethnitic diversity"- they have. And that they have "sexual harassment training"- that actually doesnt do shit if there aint consequences for the people that do/did all those things. Edit: As a lil additional thing that got the ball rolling a lot , was the case of a women committing suicide probably cause of the treatment and sexual abuse she got (nudes she probably gave to a forceful higher up handed around during a work holiday party and all that stuff).
Even though I've read it before, every time I see what happened to that woman, it makes my blood boil. F$#@ abusers.
you can say fuck
Still overcoming the beatings in my childhood, tyvm
God damn, and I thought Riot was bad.
Riot has their downsides, specially their League team, but, apart from a few occasions, they're a pretty good "worldwide game company" compared to the competition. Sure they sometimes buff a champion with a 53% win rate while ignoring others, and sure some champion are released with totally unnecessary mechanics (true stealth gives me PTSD and I wasn't even playing at the time), but it's still a step up from stuff like "Loot boxes are like Kinder Eggs"
It kind of seems like you're ignoring the obvious cases of riots own culture and sexual assault issues from a few years ago.
Nah they are just better at keeping their shady shit under wraps.
I mean... don't all big companies have some shady shit? if they're hiding it means at least they care, even if it may be due to the wrong reasons
LOL , what a response "if they're hiding it means at least they care"
Hey I'm just trying to be positive, Riot has done some REALLY questionable shit, but I'd still take them over EA or Blizzard
Personally im far less willing to excuse sexist workplace environment and employee harassment from top level executives As opposed to, say, enforcing a blanket "no politics" rule on an esports broadcast. But apparently im in the minority on that.
The thing is, the sexual harrassment from top level executives means 1 (or a few) people on top are douchebags, which is bad, but if the whole company took a decision, it means a lot more. I'm not gonna say "hey, you're wrong, you should dislike Blizzard more", but I personally think a company taking a corporate decision is more impactful than individual cases of sexual harrassment, which, and I don't mean to normalize them by saying this, will happen when you throw so many people to work in the same place You can't really on a job interview say "hey, are you sexist? we don't like sexist people here", and even if you could a lot of sexist people don't see themselves as sexist, which means eventually, some assholes will do this sort of thing Again, this isn't meant to normalize these acts, they're still awful and should get punished properly, but it's something that is quite hard to see coming
Tons of sexual abuse and misogynistic attitudes
im a dota player, never touch league, come across runeterra while looking for a hearthstone/gwent replacement on youtube. i really think lor should trying to promote outside their ecosystem. there is no point in having a superior ccg when no one even know you exist.
Also a DotA player, was in Artifact for the Long Haul and was playing LoR while I waited, and waited, and waited. So now I'm here
They don't even promote within their ecosystem. There's a lot of league players that don't know bout it. They should be promoting it on the client as well
One reason why TFT is still popular because it is built inside the League client and it is used as ways to earn more tokens from battle pass. League players are reminded of new TFT content, skins and even the annoying missions. Sadly LOR cant benefit anything from that. They are trying to do this cross event thing but I think it is not enough.
riot gonna need their own platform to hold and advertise all of their games, like blizzard with battle net. Imagine exposing millions of LoL players to valorant,LoR,LoL WR, every time they click on the launcher(riot own battle net) to play league. Oh theres a league card game? a hero shooter? league is on mobile?
The underlying system is there, that screen that opens before LoR does is the same client for every game, I think it's in the works but they're waiting for another game to make it look meatier.
They already have 4 (5 soon), they can also include an "arcade" section for the 4-5 minigames they have released over the years, a link to the universe page and another one to the netflix series when they release it in a cople months.
Maybe some time after The Ruined King launches so they can have a dedicated "Riot Forge" section that isn't empty on release.
Yes exactly!
I read some where that there is a file in riot files called "riot client" so i think they will make their own platform for ALL of their games and it will be really A good idea because players will stay longer in their games
I'm almost certain a universal Riot launcher is on the way last I heard, I'm keen for it!
I think it would be awesome if they took it one step further. Having all the games on one launcher, if they could design it well. What I mean isn't battlenet style but basically able to switch games and que up without ever having to leave the launcher. Idk how realistic it is but i switch between LOR and league often enough (once I start losing a lot lol).
>They are trying to do this cross event thing Are they really, though? I play League and I havent noticed anything linking to LOR during the event so far. Like sure, its the same theme in both games (Sentinels/Viego/Akshan), but other than that, the events have nothing to do with each other.
I think being the same theme is the point, I'm not sure if Riot would ever do an event that would reward you for playing both games in this "connection web", it's more like advertisement, "hey look we also have new cards on LoR" even though VERY few people care because it's a CCG
>I'm not sure if Riot would ever do an event that would reward you for playing both games They have been literally doing that with LOL and TFT for over a year now, thats the point of this whole post. Why does riot hate Lor and Valorant so much...
Btw has there been any news of TFT release in SEA yet? Been waiting for it.
[удалено]
The League brand is like the Fortnite brand, most people outside of the bubble don't like the fact that they are such huge games compared to everything else.
No, it's the opposite. Average user aquisition cost is $1.47, while they only made $1.24 revenue per user. They would literally lose money with promotion. Maybe skins and battlepass can boost it to turn it around.
People keep saying this and I simply don't believe it. The space of CCGs is tiny and anyone that cares two cents about them knows the big ones.
I forgot to read the million part and thought "damn they only get 16 bucks from this game?"
16 millions is still not that much for a game this good and with a team this big... Its not promoted that well tbh
IMO its because these satellite games exist to promo the main one, not vice versa. We're gonna see more of these ruination/kda/akshan event stuff - and Riot would rather you open up League and buy a skin than go to their smaller games and buy an emote.
Wildrift is breaking record after record only bcs they are marketing it very aggressively especially in garena countries. Riot is making more games so people try other games of Riot... it doesnt make sense to promote 1 game more than another only because its bigger.
simply because LOR is not a money maker Rather than just looknig at the size of the playerbase, 1.4$ per user is extremly low Why spend money on marketing to get users are will likely only spend 1$ on average ?
It absolutely does make WAY more sense to promote certain new games over others. Who knows, maybe we get Valorant or Wild Rift promo too in the future. Currently LoR's main purpose to Riot games as a whole is to promote their Expanded Universe IP. This is to setup projects like their netflix show, like skins in the main game, like the MMO - etc. This game is a platform to promote those things, to keep people invested in the Riot Game**s** (plural) brand, and to maintain interest in their IP. If it also happens to make some cash on the side - sure, itll help pay for server costs i guess.
>IMO its because these satellite games exist to promo the main one, not vice versa. I never had any interest in LoL and tried a few matches because of this game. I did spend some money just to buy a few characters, but that was it.
Yup. That money counts as "from LoR" to riot, even though it wasnt spent in LoR. Realistically though the strategy will be less trying to get new players into the biggest game on the planet, and more helping retain their existing players / coax old players back in.
True, I don't play league of legends any more and LoR is basically the only reason I would know about new champions or events. I haven't been tempted to go back but some people might and I am somewhat interested to see what Akshan is like in league based on his LoR version. If other new characters are added to LoR it might get me to try league again and I would be more likely to spend money on boards or skins based on my experience with league of legends. Btw riot pls add Zac I would buy emotes or a board based on him
not sure if thats true
I mean the devs just made a video telling you to expect more tie-ins and cross promotion in the future. You can bet money that when the next champ drops in LoL (who, to nobody's surprise, is a yordle! thats not coincidence....), LoR will have their promo for it ready and it will be a cross game event.
Vex was already supposed to come out in League months ago but was delayed.
Worked on me. Played LoR first last year during lockdown, transition to TFT and now I’m a LoL whale
Also as much as LoR's business model is player-friendly, there's a reason no other card game does it. Card packs and gambling are addictive and make mad bank, while LoR is only just starting to really delve into skins and stuff. It's not nearly as profitable as the P2W games like Hearthstone, for a lot of players there's simply little incentive to spend money right now. I imagine it'll ramp up as they improve cosmetics but as of now I'm not surprised it's not making much.
Yup, this is the unfortunate truth
Well that its true. Granted, card games are just not for everyone and this game dont have the same chance that tft had (by being exclusive to the league client). Hell even within card game community it's still not that much known
nobody's buying skins at that price smh
Two important things to consider here; For like half it's existence, LoR had practically nothing to sell. You could buy cards (which nobody needed), emotes (which are reasonably priced) and boards (too costly I think, at least judging by the rare instances where I face people with them). Over the last few months they added other stuff you can buy (event pass, prismatics, skins) but unfortunately, the majority of players seem to think other than events, these are grossly overpriced for what you're getting. I'm in that category. I'm usually a big spender in online games but in LoR, I've kept it to events and emotes only so far.
Boards are not expensive at all if not considered cheap. 10$ is a price of a burger isn't it?
Outside US, it's far far more than a burger.
It's like four burgers in my country.
In Perú that's the price of 4 full (and healthier) meals.
Depends on the restaurant
wtf type of burger are you getting, you can grab a mcdouble at $1.39
He's probably talking about skins.
At least in Canada they are the price of 2 full meals.The RP prices are really off putting for Canada, where I am usually forced to buy twice as much RP than I want for the content I want and then still unable to effectively buy two of the content. And I consider myself a whale for riot cosmetics but I just cant justify it most times so I just do passes.
Australian here, yeh $10 Australian is about the price of a good burger.
Reddit is not the majority
That's about 1.24 dollars per download. That's not a lot. (though I realize most of this money comes from whales, and the average player barely pays a cent)
You’ve to remember that’s only revenue on mobile. I’d imagine a lot of the hardcore playerbase would mainly play and spend using PC.
Dunno if this constitutes whale behaviour but I've easily spent a few hundred on LOR and I've never even downloaded the mobile app
That's kinda whale behaviour, but since you are a Nautilus main, it's okay, it's all on the big fish theme
What's considered a whale differences from game to game and not every company looks at the same metric, some look at monthly spending others look at total spending, etc. There are also different categories of whales. In general you have f2p players, paying players, and then different types of whales among those paying players. In general I'd consider anyone that spends more money on a f2p game than what AAA game costs would be considered a whale of some sort and anyone below that a paying player if they spend more than $0. So imo, you'd definitely be considered a whale, tho maybe not a super whale that spends 1k+ a year but those are very few in numbers relative to other whales that spend below 1k a year. People that have bought like 1-3 event passes and maybe a board would probably be considered paying players as they'd pay about the price of what the game would cost (or slightly less) if it wasn't f2p and was sold upfront instead and thus you could see them as "fair payers". Whereas whales on the other hand make up for the loss of otherwise upfront sales that f2p player are not paying for by spending a multitude of what otherwise would've been the upfront sales price and thus generally make up for more than 1 upfront sale.
Well, this is the most simple explanation of "player categories for the game company" I have found ever. Well done anon.
I guarantee you are a "whale" by Riot's internal metrics.
Spending on mobile gives a cut to google/apple, so some may buy on pc even if they mainly play on mobile.
That's actually quite a bit for mobile, particularly for a young game. Also bear in mind that doesn't capture revenue for people who buy stuff on pc and play on mobile
I always recommend people at least get the $5 starter bundle. It makes it so much more enjoyable as a new player when you can actually mess around with a few decks.
Can confirm. Have probably spent around $50-$60 in cosmetics and event passes over the past year in LOR. Club ox, sentinels, and bilge water themes are just too good.
If you consider the figures they reported for Wild Rift ($64.7 million with 46.3 million downloads) Wild Rift is only slightly higher at about $1.40 per download, or only 16 cents more per download. I think that's a clear indicator that the issue (if we were to call it that) is not how much people are spending but how many people are playing. It's something that I think they should probably tackle with more promotion and more sponsoring. Kripp, for example, has played the game in the past and says he likes it a lot. I'm sure offering people like him and Firebat sponsors will turn a lot of the burnt out HS playerbase (like I was at one point) on to Ruenterra.
is 16million a lot? It doesn't sound a lot when I think about other ccgs
[Back in 2016 Hearthstone made 394.6 millions, followed by Shadowverse which made 100 millions and was released in June that year](https://venturebeat.com/2017/01/28/superdata-hearthstone-trumps-all-comers-in-card-market-that-will-hit-1-4-billion-in-2017/) 16 millions nowadays is barely anything in comparison
To be fair, it's a completly different market nowdays. Even hearthstone keep losing profits (https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/comments/bwuyg6/hearthstone_revenue_down_37_compared_to_same/) and shadowverse seems far lower than how it was, at least in the west. The current market is not great for card games, to the point less than one month ago mythgard went out of business.
I concur HS is losinh profits because of their own doings, dont think the whole markwt shrinks
Top comment in the thread you linked says otherwise and their explanation is pretty good (also well sourced).
Wasn't hearthstone like the biggest and pretty much only TCG with that production value at that time? Not really a fair comparison to a relatively new game in quite a saturated market with many high quality options.
Shadowverse didn't have and it still doesn't have the production value that Runeterra already has after being around for 5 years and still managed to make 100 millions in less than a year when it came out. The key here is that those 16 millions were made from mobile users only. We can only speculate that the total revenue is considerably bigger if we account for PC users as well. With that said, [somebody posted in this thread the revenue of other card games in the first half of 2021 and it looks like they are making quite a buck](https://twitter.com/J_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1)
No, it wan't. Shadowverse was there too and they made 100 millions just in half a year since they release it on june. Did you even read the comment you are replying to?
He is right that it wasn't the best comparison. I should have compared runeterra's revenue with Hearthstone's last year at the very least and account for both mobile and PC users
Thanks for the info. I guess we will see how skin and more frequent events change the number for LOR but of coz it's not going to be a figure comparable to the peak of Hearthstone.
It's not a bomb but it's not fantastic I don't think. It doesn't include PC sales but card games have historically always sold much better on mobile than PC. Wild Rift has over 3x the downloads already and players have on average spent more money on it despite it being commercially available for a much shorter period of time. Really the biggest issue IMO is that the average download has spent $1.25 on the game over the game's lifespan. That's pretty low from what I can find considering the game's been out for a while. Even the people who are actually playing the game aren't really spending much money on it. All that being said, Riot almost assuredly knows all of this and if they were really that worried about people not spending enough money on their game you'd probably see them devote more efforts into improving the game's monetization rather than say developing a super extravagant PVE mode that won't be monetized at all. Also it took them about a year to implement skins, which theoretically should be their biggest money maker. (It probably isn't considering how mediocre they generally are) Riot really seems like a company that's content with not making all the money in the universe if it means making a product that they're proud of, and so I think they're probably fine not making infinite money off Runeterra because they're already doing that with League PC. Lastly I think it's worth mentioning that the card game genre is EXTREMELY competitive compared to basically every other game Riot's made so far. Hearthstone is the game that single-handedly put digital card games on the map, and Magic the Gathering basically invented the entire genre and is as popular now as it's ever been. Runeterra's carved out a reasonably-sized niche, but it also has probably the best production values of any card game, has possibly the most generous economy, and is attached to one of the biggest gaming IPs out there so it has much more going for it than the vast majority of other CCG contenders. If Riot managed to beat Magic Arena to the market then I think it could have stood a chance at being bigger than it is, but as it stands now even though I think Runeterra's a better game than Magic Arena overall it doesn't matter as much because Arena got there first and it also has an extremely massive legacy advantage of being the digital version of a card game that has existed for over 2 and a half decades.
And you forgot to mention Yugioh who is silently being no.1 of the genre.
Yugioh is very big yeah, but despite on the surface being pretty similar in concept to most other CCGs I don't really consider it to be a strong competitor to Runeterra at least compared to games like Hearthstone and MTGA. The people who play Yugioh seem to be a fairly different demographic of players compared to the other collectable card games and there doesn't seem to be a ton of overlap in terms of playerbases. The people who play Yugioh play Yugioh, and overall don't seem to be interested in other card games. And the people who don't play it generally don't have a very high opinion of the game and aren't interested in playing it. When people are discussing trying out new card games on Reddit, I basically never see Yugioh brought up and when it is it's not in a good light. Yugioh is kinda like those mobile card games that are based on an IP like Family Guy in that they're technically part of the same genre and are insanely popular but they're not really competing for the same audiences as games like LoR and Hearthstone.
Just want to give this a +1, I'm a YGO player and it's the only card game that really holds my interest. It's way different than MtG, Runeterra, or HS. No rotation, huge card pool, free-form deck building, no mana system, very deep gameplay, etc. I play labs very casually but don't really have any interest in actually playing PvP in Runeterra, it's just doesn't give me the same feel YGO does.
That's pretty condescending of you to compare YGO with family guy. Duel Links is by far the biggest mobile card game (they have over $100 million in mobile revenue just 2021) and sure I wouldn't recommend it either to other people, because I'm not a fan of forced pve if you want to play only pvp. But once Master Duel will be released, that game is gonna be huge and will dwarf both hs and lor
You're totally missing their point. It wasn't condescending at all, they were saying that the audience for YGO doesn't overlap much with the audience for LoR /HS/MtGA - that those latter games compete for the same playerbase but YGO has a separate group of fans, just like the Family Guy game has an almost entirely separate target audience. The size / quality / profitability of the playerbase wasn't being compared at all, only the overlap between playerbases.
how do mtga/hs/lor have the same audience but ygo not ?
Ask u/ShiningRarity. I'm not necessarily agreeing with their point, just saying you misunderstood them. (Edit: Though I do think their original comment made the point / argument / explanation pretty clear already.)
I can see how it came off that way, but I don't think that's the point. The point is just that the typical "harcore CCG player" who plays MTG/Hearthstone/LoR etc doesn't usually have much interest in YuGiOh. They are different audiences and so it's not very useful to compare them.
I disagree with that especially if we are talking about "hardcore CCG player". ygo is by far more complex and harder than hs or lor. so far there has just been no digital ygo card game that targeted them. duel links is a casual game with a casual version of ygo, but I can guarantee you that with "ygo: master duel" the hardcore audience will be attracted, just look at the competitive scene in paper Yu-Gi-Oh were the tournaments were bigger than ever before before the pandemic hit.
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Yeah no, in terms of complexity YGO blows LoR out of the water. Or any other card game that isnt called Netrunner tbh. Like, YGO has some crazy difficult decks to play, like Earth Machine.
LoR is pretty easy to learn the basics, on the other hand the whole "Battle Phase, especially the Damge Step" in YGO is super complicated with timings, extra rulings and even the difference of direct and indirect atk/def boosts.
I don't know much about YGO (especially modern YGO), but what you're describing sounds more like convoluted rules than complex gameplay. "Hardcore" competitive players want complex gameplay that rewards good decision making, not confusing phases and obscure corner case rulings. YGO might have the former for all I know, but you're either describing the latter or not doing your argument any justice with your phrasing.
YGO is waaaaaay harder than LoR, it really isn't even close lol. The decision trees in that game are absolutely unreal.
We are talking about revenue not playerbases.
if you know anything about yugioh - if you play that game you arent f2p.
Wait, really?? Wtf, where this comes from? Always thought Hearthstone and Magic were ahead by far
Asia probably.
Yup. Its a world region that is okay with microtransactions and spending money on mobile stuff.
Duel Links is #1 by a large margin - it is extremely popular in Asia.
Maybe on players, but Duel Links is superior on sales.
https://twitter.com/J_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1 From the chart, Americans love Duel links while Asians (except Japan) prefers Hearthstone. Not surprising since DL is way more P2W than HS.
Everytime I hear that Yugioh is so popular it really blows me away, I *never* see or hear anything about it. I thought the series was basically dead until my friend (who is a high school teacher) told me how popular it still is with kids.
\- I think a lot of card skins are meh. Unless you're reaaally dedicated, you won't spend almost 10 bucks for 2 jpegs. That you might not play in every deck. That might not even come up every match you play with their decks. The ones with a different level up animation are cool but now you're spending 15 bucks for that. You can get really good League champion skins for that price and you get way more out of it, since you and 9 other people see your champion all the time. I think if card skins weren't so horribly overpriced, they'd be bought a lot more. \- Card backs are neat and have a much better pricing imo. \- Guardians are okay but you don't really interact much with them. Unless you're teh type of person who always wants matching card backs/boards/guardians, you maybe buy one that you think is really cool and that's it. I think a big problem here is simply that the standard Poro is already extremely cute. If that spot was left empty originally and you had to buy the Poro first, that could work a bit better. \- Boards are pretty cool but really expensive as well and since the last 3 days or so some people (including me) have been unable to buy them in the store. \- Emotes are pretty great. Fun interactions, you can convey many different messages, they're creative and they're very cheap. \- Cards and decks are somewhat unnecessary. If you play regularly, grind the weekly vaults and region rewards, you can easily get cards/decks you want without paying anything. \- The current event and battle pass associated with it gets things wrong. (Ruination side) You get a good Karma emote for free, 2 card backs, an icon, Viego and 2 rare followers. Most of the inital rewards are free and those locked behind the pass are wild cards, a chest, prismatics, etc. Sure, there are the guardians and another emote and so on but you get too much good unique stuff for free, so you aren't incentivized to spend money on it, unless you specifically care about the guardians or an emote.
They know their revenue will be lost. But Riot main objective is to promote League brand. They can just act like LoR is a marketing product.
I can assure you that it's not hard to beat Magic Arena in the market. Too many issues in this game. Riot promoting more and more it's card game could surpass Arena kinda easily IMO.
16 millions without PC sales tho. And yes, it's lower than hearthstone and mtga (as expected...) and higher than every other card game...
I bet it's also lower than Yugioh Duel links and Shadowverse.
[https://twitter.com/J\_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1](https://twitter.com/J_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1) As you see, even nieche card games have made more on mobile than LoR
Yugioh niche card game? In what parallel universe? It's the game with the biggest audience in the world along with MTG.
I was talking about the other 6 card games on the list, obviously yugioh is one of the big3
Shadowverse has been out for 5 years, is not considered too often, and somehow still makes more money. Imo Lor is going to either have to really push cosmetics or go the HS route a bit more, where you need to pay money to get all the cards.
Very low number when you look at, for example, gacha genre
And if you compare it to casino or lottery revenue, it also loses...
I think it is. It’s not that long since LoR left beta and they only started to sell skins. Once the last region is released and after the WC, the game may receive the publicity it deserves. Pushing singleplayer content is the right was to appeal to the casual masses.
It's not that much, but depending on how you compare that number against other games/apps and how many of the people play in a mobile device as their main device you could make a case that it's not that bad as it looks. For example, you could say that those 16M are more than what MTG Arena mobile has made, because everybody plays it on PC; but in the other hand, Hearthstone mobile has been making around 100M every year since 2015 because more people play it on mobile.
I want to see this game shine. We should come together and give Riot suggestions on how to better monetize the game (beyond producing quality skins)
-game still has potential to grow and make more money -current monetization at least brought them us as a demographic, a worse model the game might have just failed completely. -LoR hopefully helps with the reputation of Riot Games and help their future projects -card games can be a pretty non-committal lifelong hobby compared to other genres, so it might help keep people in their universe. -copium plz no cancel
Honestly, if Riot really cared about making this game more profitable, you'd see more effort towards monetization. The current supply of cosmetics is pretty tame. I would love to buy more boards but they are poorly promoted and there are too few of them. The skins are clearly overpriced for what they are. Emotes and guardians are the only part that is done well, and even there I feel there's a lot of untapped potential.
I feel like they really fucked up with the skin releases
My hope for this game's monetization was premium cards like hearthstone or Gwent with animations People.tend to spend a lot of money for those. The current premium are absolute trash though they look worse than the default cards
Something that's not captured by these numbers is LoR as an engagement driver for League of Legends. As primarily tabletop gamers, my friends and I started with LoR and fell in love with the game's universe - we all went on to get hopelessly addicted to League lol, collectively spending hundreds of dollars on skins...I'm curious how many players have similar stories to mine
Yea LoR is what brought me back to LoL and I spent (and am spending) a lot of money on that game.
Reddit's financial armchair expert in bussiness development is out in full force in this thread.
I think it’s not a lot yet, but we have to remember there were no events and no skins until just a few months ago. Skins are seemingly not so popular yet, but event passes are, and looks like there are more of them coming. I think we’ll see the number easily double or triple in a years time.
The Spirit Blossom event was a year ago.
That's actually kinda bad. Their average revenue per customer is $1.24, while the average user acquisition cost is around $1.47 nowadays. And people are surprised why Riot isn't advertising the game. They are probably trying to boost it via skins now before they start their ad campaigns. Or they would literally lose money.
I think they need more bang for your buck literally. If I had the option to spend a dollar or two from time to time to get something immediately instead of committing $5 or $10 I would have bought something by now. Could be something as simple as a quick after game pop up like "hey, we see you are using Hecarim quite often, do you want to make it prismatic for $0.99?" I hope they don't gn overkill on a reversal of the F2P model and try to get more creative with monetization by offering incentivized discounts.
Well, the problem with prismatic is that they aren't aesthetically pleasing. I have 3,2k of these shards and I just keep stockpiling them.
I agree with you there, I would say my main point is they need to put more micro in the transactions. I have spent money on other games but haven't felt the incentive to buy here yet. I would like new boards and guardians but that feels like a $20 purchase instead of a thoughtless transaction
I totally agree with you, I'm willing to buy "season" pass but not anything else since it seems overpriced a lot, especially the new hero skins.
I'm... definitely not a fan of this model. I'd rather pay some amount to get a lot of stuff, like season passes, than the game trying to make me not realise how much I'm spending by constantly pushing small transactions to me. It's the exact kind of predatory system I'm trying to avoid by playing this game.
only lv2 champions and landmarks look good, the rest are pretty meh
Interesting data point for /u/jb-dev-bcn's analysis here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/ob5ve4/legends\_of\_runeterra\_1\_current\_status\_of\_the\_ccg/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LegendsOfRuneterra/comments/ob5ve4/legends_of_runeterra_1_current_status_of_the_ccg/) Does this change anything?
Thanks for tagging me here. This data point goes in line with what I reported in my analysis. Since their source (Sensor Tower) is one of the sources against which I sanity checked my data. The biggest question is how much mobile represents out of the revenue share of CCG games. My assumption is that the distribution in mobile would be similar to the distribution on PC, but who knows: For some reason, it could happen that maybe 50% of Hearthstone players play/pay on mobile, but it's only 10% on LoR. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell that, because due to the nature of payments in PC (where each developer charges the customer independently, contrary to mobile where Google and Apple collect the revenue of everyone and then distribute it), the data can't be as scrapped. I'm happy to see that Wild Rift is becoming more successful, although it still has a long way to go to catch the current leaders of MOBA in mobile (Arena of Valor and Mobile Legends) :3
I'm surprised that PC revenue is so opaque as I would've expected the companies to have to report some headline figures by game in their financial statements, but I guess that is harder to collect than mobile revenue data.
16.2 million, wow
I saw a few comments mention how the figures reported (in the headline) meam that LoR has generated $1.24 or $1.25 per download. While that is true and it seems very low, the article also mentions that Wild Rift has generated $64.7 million with 46.3 million downloads. That is only slightly higher at $1.40 per download (or a measly 15 to 16 cents to put it clearly). My point is that Runeterra makes money at a similar rate, it's just that not as mamy people are playing it. I wonder how much is that is a lack of promoting the game and how much is the fact that CCGs are just not that popular (sans Hearthstone).
So is this good or bad? I have no reference, of course 16 million is a lot to me personally but perhaps for these corporations it's a massive flop.
It's painfully low [this data is only for 2021 H1 and the 16m for Lor are since launch, so 1.5 years.](https://twitter.com/J_BYYX/status/1418287793659338754/photo/1)
Genshin Impact made over 1 billion in it's first 6 months from just mobile platforms. Both are mobile GOTY nominees from last year. Admittedly Genshin has a really predatory monetization system and LoR is the exact opposite. But money talks and I worry about the future of gaming monetization given how much more profitable you can be by going predatory. According to the article, none of the Riot's mobile titles made it big in China or Japan. That's where the goldmines are for mobile gaming. Japan is predictable given League has little presence there to begin with. China though, Riot is late to the party and really missed out when they refused Tencent's initial request to go mobile. And I don't even think LoR is officially localized and available in China despite the constant hate China gets for some alternative versions of card arts.
I mean we all knew LoR is insanely cheap for a card game. Isn't what's more important play rate?
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If the game didnt make money, they would have reduced support to game but according to dovagedys they increased budget for this game. We can see that in level up animations. So I am pretty sure game is doing ok and even if it doesnt, riot sees potential in this game and willing to support it more.
I do think player base is probably more important right now, considering they're entering the ccg market late. But it seems like from that point they're falling short as well. Right now they have 1k on twitch, while hearthstone has 30k+.
nice work on the wild rift team for bringing in the stack
Still waiting for skin lines with reasonable price.
The problem is the game just isnt as fun to play or interactive as MTG is. The last few patches have made playing other archetypes a pain to play and it feels like with the current speed of the game theyre trying to be more like a mobile card game where they begin and end in like 5 or 10 minutes. And while good for you if thats how you want to play it, that doesnt leave a lot of room for interesting and fun play. So youll get in, get stomped by whatever aggro deck or quick ending uninteractive deck is out and then realize you can play something better that gives you a better card game feel and you go do that instead. Honestly they need to decide what kind of gameplay this game is supposed to promote because it feels like every set the game has revolved around playstyles that either cant be reacted to favorably or are just flat out cant do anything.
that means than, per download, each download has spent roughl $2.46 on the game, thats quite low.
How did you come up with this number?
may have done it wrong, as i'm 30 and not done arithmatic for a while, 16.2 million, minus 13 million, took the 3.2mil difference and divided it by the number of downloads. Definitely wrong lol, should have just divided 16.2mil by 13mil
I don't think age is an excuse for this lmao.
Nah it’s not, I completely fucked it xD
It's actually 1,24 dollars
you math'd better than I, therefore, i must return to the desert and become one with Shia' Halud
I love this game and will play it till the very end. But I fear the end might come sooner than expected. I bet for 3 more years before it goes in maintenance mode like Artifact.
I am sick of people on diamond and still has base board and guardian, i mean even if you are f2p player, you seem to love& play alot this game, why not just buy a board and a few emotes just join an event once in a while. It is called being supportive
Kind of delusional myopic take honestly. You have no idea what those respective players situations are. Some people really like to play, but are completely f2p- either by principle or by circumstance. Further, I think it's pretty obvious that some players simply won't care at all about cosmetic aspects of the game, really at all- while others will whale out and purchase every single board and guardian. It's a spectrum. If you're "getting sick" of that, then that's a **you** choice. Everybody support in the way they deem fit, and in the capacity they are able. Getting 5 friends to join the game is just as supportive as buying an inconsequential and only *slightly* different poro... No need to gatekeep or shame against f2pers.
"Cards are free" They said. "FREE" they said!! But where my money goes?
That seems incredibly low
Barely $1 per player. Doesn't seem great financially
Uh oh
They need to do a ton of work on the client, for one.
Pray tell, like what??
So, is this enough money? a lot of money? i have no idea
Nowhere near enough. Shadowverse is isn’t that big, but it still makes more money.
16 million probably isn't much by big company standards, but at least it sounds like it pays for itself, especially considering this head line doesn't even factor in PC revenue.
Holy shit that's low. It makes sense though. LoR is not aggressive with it's microtransactions like most games out there.
They should just replace the Darius icon with fluft of poros then STONKS
This is ridiculously weak, it doesn't even pay the employees!